The Bombay high court (HC) this year will decide on 10 confirmation cases, wherein the convicts have been awarded death penalties by various trial courts. The arguments are scheduled to commence before the bench of justices AS Oka and AS Gadkari on January 8.

According to a public prosecutor, the first case to be taken up will be the Shakti Mills gang rape of a photo journalist in 2013. The conviction of the trio, Vijay Jadhav, Salim Ansari and Kasim Shaikh, were based on the new law which stipulated the death penalty for convicts of multiple rapes.

The second case is that of the 7/11 serial train blasts at Matunga, Mahim, Bandra, Khar Subway, Jogeshwari, Borivli and Mira Road railway stations on July 11, 2006. The trial court convicted twelve persons for planting and detonating bombs through timer circuits in the firstclass compartments of seven trains on the western line. While five were given death penalty, the other seven were awarded a life sentence in 2015. Those on the death row include Kamal Ansari, Faisal Shaikh, Ehtesham Siddhiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan.

The third case is that of Pune resident Vishwajeet Masalkar, who was convicted of killing his wife, mother and two-and-half-year-old daughter in 2012. He was given the death penalty by the Pune trial court in 2016. Masalkar had committed the heinous crime after an argument with his mother and wife over his affair with a colleague.

The fourth case is that of a hotel management student, Ankur Panwar, who was convicted of throwing acid on a 23-year-old nurse Preethi Rathi, resulting in her death, in 2013. He was given a death sentence in 2016. Panwar, who was Rathi’s neighbour, had followed her on to a train in Delhi and threw acid on her right before she alighted at Mumbai.

In the fifth case, two people, Rahimuddin Shaikh and Sandeep Shirsat, were given the death sentence by a Thane trial court in 2017. The duo was convicted for raping two women who worked as garbage collectors in Belapur in 2012, resulting in the death of one of them. The duo had slashed their body parts and fled, assuming both of them were dead.

In the sixth case, the Pune trial court awarded a death sentence to three persons – Yogesh Raut, Mahesh Thakur and Vishwas Kadam – for kidnapping, raping and killing a software engineer in 2009. The death penalty was awarded in 2017.

The seventh case is one of honour killing, wherein a Nashik resident, Eknath Kumbharkar, killed his pregnant daughter for marrying a man from a different caste in 2013. According to investigation, Kumbharkar had premeditated the murder. He had visited his daughter’s house, asked her to accompany him to visit her mother, and strangled her on the way. He was awarded the death sentence in 2017.

In the eighth case, six men, five Marathas and one Dalit, killed three Dalit men and dumped their bodies in a septic tank in 2013. Ramesh Darandale, Popat Darandale, Ganesh Darandale, Prakash Darandale, Sandeep Kurhe and Ashok Navgire were convicted in 2018.

The ninth case is that of Ramdas Shinde, who was convicted in 2018 for murdering a woman and her six-year-old son, after she turned down his demand for sexual favours in 2016. After the incident, Shinde had called a friend and confessed to the crime. The woman lived with her husband in a house rented out by Shinde’s father.

The tenth case is that of Imtiyaz Shaikh who kidnapped and murdered the 12-year-old son of his former employer in 2012. He was given the death sentence by a Mumbai sessions court in 2018. According to the prosecution, Shaikh sought revenge from his former employer after he was fired from his job at an embroidery workshop.

First Published: Jan 07, 2019 12:41 IST